TCN withdraws controversial Beavercreek facility application

TCN CEO Lynn West speaks at a February Beavercreek City Council meeting that drew extended public input about a potential mental health and drug treatment facility on Grange Hall Road.

The proposed facility would have been located at 1400 Grange Hall Road in Beavercreek.

BEAVERCREEK — TCN Behavioral Health Services has withdrawn a controversial proposal that if approved would have allowed it to open a treatment facility on Grange Hall Road in Beavercreek.

According to TCN CEO Lynn West, the non-profit organization’s board followed her recommendation and voted to withdraw its application to rezone the property at 1400 Grange Hall Road Thursday morning. According to West, TCN decided to withdraw its application after public comments against the proposal were raised at recent Beavercreek City Council meetings.

“We just decided that the best course of action is not to go to war with anyone, to thank them, withdraw our petition and look elsewhere,” she said. “…What I am most concerned about is, my gosh, we’ve been working on this since August. And here we are. That’s a lot of staff time and dollars.”

West said she was disappointed by the outcome, and said a “long, protracted process” would cost a lot of money and that any appeal would handicap the organization if it wanted to look for another location.

West said the organization won’t look for additional office space elsewhere in the short term and said TCN will look to expand at its current location in Fairborn, where another building tenant recently moved out. She also said TCN might look into creating a facility that would offer second-stage housing for women as well as a new facility similar to its Christopher House location — a transitional housing facility for men with alcohol and/or chemical addictions — in Xenia.

According to TCN Associate CEO Tom Otto, the organization planned to conduct mental health, prevention and substance use and abuse treatment; case management and psychiatric services at the site. TCN would have needed city council approval to rezone the property to conduct the services there.

Opposition voices at two city council meetings included several owners or representatives of businesses near the proposed site, as well as parents of children who attend a school across the street from the building. Those individuals offered mostly similar remarks supporting TCN and its mission, but elsewhere, citing safety concerns.

“I understand what happens and what can happen in these kind of businesses,” Goddard School owner Lisa Durrant said at one of the meetings in February. “We can’t take that risk with our children there. We can’t take the risk of someone being incapacitated looking for treatment at 7 o’clock in the morning and perhaps running into one of our parents or one of our children.”

Several other individuals countered with support for the center at one of the February meetings.

“We’re good neighbors,” West told council. “I think you would see that if you gave us the opportunity.”

“That would have been a great building for us,” West said Thursday. “It would have provided space for some more services. It could have been a very nice building once we rehabbed it. … There’s a bit of we might not want to be where we’re not wanted anyway.”

TCN CEO Lynn West speaks at a February Beavercreek City Council meeting that drew extended public input about a potential mental health and drug treatment facility on Grange Hall Road.

http://xeniagazette.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/web1_tcn1.jpgTCN CEO Lynn West speaks at a February Beavercreek City Council meeting that drew extended public input about a potential mental health and drug treatment facility on Grange Hall Road.

The proposed facility would have been located at 1400 Grange Hall Road in Beavercreek.

http://xeniagazette.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/web1_tcnbuilding1.jpgThe proposed facility would have been located at 1400 Grange Hall Road in Beavercreek.